Wednesday, August 08, 2012

LA Story: Encounter at the Melrose Trading Post




She wanted a satisfactory answer. Her face demanded it.  I just wanted to be left alone and continue looking through the bins.

“I don’t get it. Why?”
“I’m a story teller. I’m looking for stories.”

A blank skinny white lady stare: Not good enough.

“It could be anything. A face, an expression, a place, an era...”

She offered an “OOOOK” to break her silence.

“It’s lives and stories in bins. I’m looking for something I can’t define. I know it when I see it.”

I wait for a tiny bit of understanding.  Nothing.

“I’m an artist. It’s a conceptual thing.  Appropriation--”

She shrugged and walked away. 


I continued looking through the bins feeling very happy I was born me and not she.  I am so lucky I’m not like her, a human with a simple mind, unable to live, experience and connect on different and more complex levels. 

I stirred the heap of photographs, stuck my hand in and left it all to chance.  When I go back for more photographs, I will take one of me and sneak it in a bin.  Maybe I’ll end up on some hipster’s wall.

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